EXCERPT FROM
CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH
ATTICA
Alcibiades one day, as Ælian says, was taken by Socrates to a
building in the city of Athens, in which maps of different
countries were collected. Among them was a chart of the
habitable world, as far as it was then known to the geographers of
Greece. To this the philosopher directed the attention of his
young friend. He did so with the intention of diminishing the
pride in which the latter appeared to indulge in consequence of
the extent of his territorial possessions on the Athenian soil. He
desired him to point out the position of ATTICA on the map.
Alcibiades did so. Now show me there, said Socrates, the
situation of your own your estate. “How is it possible?” answered
the other; “can you expect that my domains should appear there,
where even Attica occupies so small a space?”
Whatever effect this comparison of the extent of his own
possessions with that of the country in which they were
contained, might have produced upon the mind of Alcibiades, a
contemplation of ATTICA itself, and of its geographical
dimensions, as contrasted with those of other countries of which
the World, as then known, consisted, will not fail to suggest
reflections of no uninteresting kind to an observer of the parts
which Nations have played as well as Men, – of the
accomplishments they have achieved, of the influence which they
have exercised, and of the position they occupy in the history of
the universe.
The superficial extent of Attica is estimated at seven hundred
square miles: its greatest length is fifty, and its breadth thirty
miles. If we compare it in size with some of the provinces of
Europe, it sinks into the insignificance of some baronial estate.
This is evidently the case if we look at its physical dimension.
But let us pass to another view of the subject. While, strictly
speaking, Attica occupies a space on the Map which is hardly
perceptible, to how many square miles, or rather thousands of
square miles, in the social an political geography of the World
does Attica extend!
This consideration fills the mind of man with a feeling of
triumph and exultation, for it presents to his sight a small
Province, confined within those narrow boundaries which have
been specified, yet stretching itself from its narrow limits to a
comprehensive vastness, even to a kind of intellectual
Omnipresence upon the surface of the earth.
There exists not a single corner of the civilized world which
has not been breathed on by the air of Attica. Its influence makes
itself felt in the thoughts and in the speech of men; it lives in the
inspirations of the Poet, in the eloquence of the Orator and in the
speculations of the Philosopher. Besides, it is the soul which
animates and informs the most beautiful creations of Art. The
works of the Architect and of the Sculptor, in every part of the
globe, speak of Attica.
But above all, it is due to the intellectual results produced by
the inhabitants of this small Canton of Europe, that the language
in which they spoke and in which they wrote, became the
vernacular tongue of the whole world. The genius of Athenians
made their speech universal: the treasures which they deposited
in it rendered its acquisition essential to all: and thus the sway,
unlimited in extent and invincible in power, which was exercised
over the universe by the arms of Rome, was exercised over Rome
itself by the arts of Athens. To Attica, therefore, it is to be
attributed that, first, precisely at the season when such a channel
of general communication was most needed, there existed a
common language in the world; and secondly, that this language
was Greek: or, in other words, that there was, at the time of the
first propagation of the Gospel, a tongue in which it could be
preached to the whole earth, and that Greek, the most worthy of
such a distinction, was the language of Inspiration, – the tongue
of the earliest preachers and writers of Christianity. Therefore we
may regard Attica, viewed in this light, as engaged in the same
cause and leagued in a holy confederacy with Palestine; we may
deem the Philosophers and Orators and Poets of this country as
preparing the way, by a special dispensation of God’s
providence, for the Apostles and Fathers and Apologists of the
Church of Christ.
Such, then, is a rapid sketch of the influence which was
exercised on the destinies of the world, and of the manner and
degree in which the highest interests of mankind have been, still
are, and will for ever be, affected, by a small province whose
physical dimensions may be said to bear the same ratio to those
of Greece, which the estate of Alcibiades did to the entire
territory of Attica itself.
This is the fact well worth of attention: nor is it a matter of
vain or idle speculation to examine the causes which led to so
remarkable a result.
The land of Attica is a Peninsula; from this circumstance it
derived its name: in form it is an irregular triangle, of which the
base or northern side is applied to the Continent of Greece: with
its eastern face it looks towards Asia, from its apex on the south,
it contemplates Aegypt; and on the west it directs its view to the
Peloponnesus, and to the countries of Italy and Sicily lying
beyond it.
By this combination of the advantages of inland
communication with those of the extensive and various
intercourse with all the civilized countries of the world, it was
distinguished from all the other States both of the Peninsula and
Continent of Greece.
It should not be omitted, that on the coasts of which we speak,
and by which Attica was bounded on the east and west, it was
furnished with commodious harbours for the reception of
shipping: and this will appear more clearly to have been the fact,
if we consider the nature and requirements of vessels of antiquity.
When, also, we bear in mind the peculiar practice by which the
navigation of the ancients was distinguished from that of modern
times, and which gave to their voyages the character of cruising
and coasting expeditions, rather than that of adventurous
passages from one continent to another, the islands which hang in
a continuous chain from the promontory of Sunium, and connect
it with the Asiatic shore, will then assume the character of ports
or emporiums of Attica.
As Greece was the centre of the civilized world of antiquity, so
was Attica the centre of Greece; and as the climate and
temperature of Hellas was considered to be more favourable than
that of any other country of Europe or of Asia for the healthy and
vigorous development of the physical and intellectual faculties of
man, so did every Hellenic province yield in these respects to the
superior claims of the Athenian territory.
Again, it was not merely aided by these natural advantages,
which arose from its form, its position, and its climate: the very
defects, also, under which this country laboured, the very
difficulties with which it was compelled to struggle, supplied to
Attica the inducements and afforded it means, for availing itself
in the most effectual manner of those benefits and privileges with
which Nature had so liberally endowed it. One of these apparent
deficiencies was the barrenness of its soil.
The geological formation of Attica is primitive limestone: on
its northern frontier, a long ridge of mountains, consisting of such
a stratification, stretches from east to west: a range of similar
character bounds it on the west, and in the interior of the country
it is intersected with hills, from north to south, which belong to
the same class.
Thus it will appear, that the geographical dimensions of Attica,
limited as they are, must be reduced by us within a still narrower
range, when we consider it as far as it is available for the
purposes of cultivation. In this respect, its superficial extent
cannot be rated at more than one-half the value which has been
assigned to the whole country.
These mountains of which we have above spoken, are either
bare and rugged, or thinly clad with scanty vegetation and low
shrubs. The mountain-pine is found on the slopes of LAUREUM:
the steeps of PARNES and PENTELICUM are sprinkled over
with the dwarf oak, the lentisk, the arbutus, and the bay. But the
hills of this country can boast few timber trees; they serve to
afford to afford pasture to numerous flocks of sheep and goats,
which browse upon their meagre herbage, and climb among their
steep rocks, and to furnish fuel to the inhabitants of the plain.
While such is the character of the mountainous districts of the
province, its plains and lowlands cannot lay a much better claim
to the merit of fertility. In many parts of them, as in the city of
Athens itself, the calcareous rock projects above the surface, or is
scarcely concealed beneath a light covering of soil: in no instance
do they possess any considerable deposit of alluvial earth.
The plains if this country are irrigated by few streams, which
are rather to be called torrents than rivers, and on none of them
can it depend for a perennial supply of water. There is no lake
within its limits. It is unnecessary to suggest the reason, when
such was the nature of the soil, that the Olive was the most
common, and also the most valuable, production of Attica.
Such, then were some of the physical defects of this land. But
these disadvantages, for such in fact they were when considered
in themselves, were abundantly compensated by the beneficial
effects which they produced.
The sterility of Attica drove its inhabitants from their own
country. It carried them abroad. It filled them with a spirit of
activity, which loved to grapple with difficulty, and to face
danger: it did for them, what the wise Poet says was done for the
early inhabitants of the World by its Supreme Ruler, who, in his
figurative language, first agitated the sea with storms, and hid
fire, and checked the streams of wine which flowed abroad in the
golden age, and shook the honey from the bough, in order that
men might learn the arts in the stern School of Necessity: it told
them, that if they would maintain themselves in the dignity which
became them, they must regard the resources of their own land as
nothing , and those of the other countries as their own.
The same cause, also, while it inspired them with an ardent
desire for bold and adventurous enterprise, and thus detach them
from the tranquil and limited objects of their own homes; yet, by
another influence which it possessed, it called them back with a
feeling a patriotic devotion to the scenes and recollections of the
country of their birth.
For it arose from the barrenness of her soil, as her greatest
historian observes, that Attica had always been exempt from the
revolutions which in early times agitated the other countries of
Greece, which poured over their frontiers the changeful floods of
migratory populations, which disturbed the foundations of their
national history, and confounded the civil institutions of the
former occupants of the soil.
But Attica, secure in her sterility, boasted that her land had
never been inundated by those tides of immigration. She had
enjoyed a perpetual calm. She had experienced no such change:
the race of her inhabitants had been ever the same; nor could she
tell whence they had sprung: no foreign land had sent them; they
had not forced their way within her confines by a violent
irruption. She traced the stream of her population in a backward
course, through many generations, till at last it hid itself, like one
of her own brooks, in the recesses of her own soil.
This belief, that her people was indegenous, she expressed in
different ways. She imitated it in the figure which she assigned to
Cecrops, the heroic Prince and Progenitor of her primaeval
inhabitants. She represented him as combining in his person a
double character: while the higher parts of his body were those of
a man and a king, the serpentine folds in which it was terminated,
declared his extraction from the earth. The Cicadae of gold,
which she braided in her hair, were intended to denote the same
thing; they signified that the natives of Attica sprang from the
soil upon which they sung, and which was believed to feed them
with its dew.
The attachment of the inhabitants of this country to their own
land was cherished and strengthened by this creed: they gloried
in being natives of hills and plains which no one had ever
occupied but themselves, and in which they had dwelt from a
period of the remotest antiquity: and thus the barrenness of their
soil, while it urged them to foreign lands on adventures of
commerce or of conquest, brought them back to their own home
with emotions of patriotic enthusiasm; it led them to regard
themselves as citizens of all civilized countries of the globe; but
it also made them consider those countries as only colonies of
Attica.
Such then were some of the circumstances which gave to this
small province he dignity and importance which it enjoyed
among the nations of the world: occasions will arise hereafter of
noticing some other particulars which conduce to the same end,
in the course of the observations which will be made on the
principal sites and geographical features which distinguish it.
For this purpose we will turn our attention to tat mountain
which we have already described as the northern frontier of
Attica. This is Mount PARNES. It separates the Athenian plain
from the valley of Boeotia by a rocky barrier, which extends
from the eastern termination of Cithaeron to the coast of the
Euripus. On the west this plain is bounded by a ridge of which
the principal summit is Mount AEGALEOS, and which stretches
southward from Mount Parnes to the Bay of Salamis: its eastern
limit is formed by the two mountains, Pentelicus on the north and
Hymettus on the south; the latter of which sinks into the sea on
the east in the same manner as Mount Aegaleos does on the west.
Thus, as the city of Athens was both protected from external
aggression, and also connected with the sea by means of it Long
Walls – as they were called – which stretched from the town to
its harbours, so was the Plain of Athens defended from invasion
and maintained in communication with the coast by its Long
Walls – that is, by its mountain bulwarks – namely, by Parnes
and Aegaleos on the west, and by Pentelicus and Hymettus on the
east; and thus the hand of Nature had effected for the Plain what
done for the capital of Attica by the genius of Cimon and o
Pericles. jsk
In our survey of the geography of Attica, we propose to pursue
this mountain range from its south-western extremity on the
coast, and to trace its course in a northerly direction till we arrive
at the point from which it begins to descend to the south. We
shall then follow the eastern ridge is a contrary direction till we
reach the sea again, at the south-east corner of the Athenian plain.
In other words, we shall ascend from the sea by the western, and
descend to it again by the eastern of these two Long Walls o Hills
which have been described.
With this view, we shall take our station at the southern
declivity of Mount Aegaleos.
From this point we overlook the Gulf and the Island of
SALAMIS, which lie beneath us on the south. The hill on which
we stand, is now bare and desolate; the gulf is vacant and still;
the island presents no object to attract the eye, except a few
cottages, and one or two small churches which are scattered
among the vineyards of Ambelakia, the village which now
occupies the site of the ancient city of Salamis.
But it was on this spot where we now are, in the month of
September of the year B.C. 480, on a day of momentous
importance to the fortunes of Greece and of the whole civilized
world, that the great King of Persia, Xerxes, sat and looked down
upon the island and upon the gulf, and all the natural objects
which we now see. It was here that he viewed the battle of
Salamis.
In the Straits below him, on the eastern side, or that nearest to
himself, of the Gulf, was drawn up in three lines, and in all the
pageantry of Oriental splendour, with all their variety o national
equipment, and in all the pride of anticipated victory, that
immense Armada of vessels which he had brought together from
every quarter of his vast dominions; which he had collected from
the shores of the Persian Gulf and of Ionia, from Cyprus and
Caria, from Phoenicia and from Aegypt. The whole maritime
force of the East was there, lying at the feet of their sovereign,
and about to engage in his cause.
Opposite to them, on the western side of the Strait, and lining
the eastern coast of the Island of Salamis, lay the combined navy
of Athens, Aegina and Sparta. It consisted of three hundred and
ten ships, while those of their opponents amounted to more than
one thousand vessels. But the Greeks hand amongst them men
second to none in wisdom, genius, and valour. While Xerxes sat
and encouraged the Persians, Themistocles fought and
commanded the Greeks. On the islet of Psyttalea, at the southern
entrance of the Straits, was Aristides: mixed in the battle were
men such as Ameinias and his brother the pot Aeschylus, who
afterwards celebrated in verse the deeds of his country at
Salamis: and besides all these, the majestic forms of the old
Aecidae, the divinised heroes of Aegina and of Salamis – of Ajax
and Teucer and Achilles – who had been implored with solemn
entreaties to assist their descendants, were seen coming to the
conflict, dressed in the armour with which they ought at Troy,
animating their own countrymen and striking terror into the
hearts of the Barbarians. jsk
The Sea, too, the Wind, and the Place itself, in which, on
account of its narrow and confined limits, the vast numbers of the
Persian army embarrassed and crippled themselves, – all these
were powerful allies which fought for Athens and for Greece.
These, then, were the objects which Xerxes saw from the
station which he occupied on the southern slope of Mount
Aegaleos. He himself was sitting there, attired in his royal robes,
on a throne of gold supported by silver feet: around him, while he
viewed the battle, were his princes and courtiers from Susa and
Babylon and Ecbatana; on each side stood the Secretaries of he
King, with tablets in their hands, on which they noted down the
names of those Persian combatants who were observed to
distinguish themselves by any act of remarkable courage in the
conflict.
From this spot, on the morning of the battle, Xerxes heard the
war-song of the Greeks proceeding to the fight, and the echo of
the island rocks which responded to the martial paean. This
sound was followed by the splash of their oars beating the wave
in regular order, and by the unanimous voice of the whole navy
moving onward in a compact body, and cheering the Sons of
Greece, with one heart and tongue, to go to the battle and free
their country, their children, their wives, the temples of their gods
and the tombs o their ancestors; for all these were now at stake.
In the evening of the same day he saw the surface of the Gulf
covered with the wreck of his vessels and with the corpses of his
men: he beheld the flower of his army falling before his eyes in
the little island of Psyttalea, at the southern extremity o the
channel, where he had placed them for the purpose of preventing
the escape of the Greeks.
This sight he could not endure: he groaned deeply, rent his
clothes, and rushed from his throne of gold in an agony of grief.
Such was the conclusion of the battle of Salamis. The throne of
the Persian King, having become the spoil of the conquerors, was
afterwards dedicated to Minerva, and preserved in the Acropolis
of Athens, with the sword which was taken from Mardonius the
Persian General at the battle of Plataea.
We proceed from this point, about five miles northward, along
the same ridge, till we fall into the road which crosses the
mountain of Aegaleos in its way westward to ELEUSIS, which
lies on the coast, and is situated at a distance from Athens of
about eleven miles. At a short space before its arrival at Eleusis,
it pursues the southern edge of the Thriasian plain.
A few days before the battle of Salamis, when Attica was
deserted by its inhabitants, who had taken refuge in their ships,
and on the shores of SALAMIS and of TROEZEN, and when
their country was occupied by the forces of Xerxes, a cloud of
dust was seen coming from Eleusis by two persons in the Persian
army, who were then standing in this plain. It appeared to them
to be issuing from that city, and to arise from a procession which
they supposed might amount in numbers to thirty thousand men.
Presently they heard a sound, as if uttered by a chorus of voices,
and proceeding from the same quarter. One of them , who was
acquainted with the strains used on such occasions, declared to
his companion that the sound which they then heard was no other
than the hymn which was sung in honour of the mystic Bacchus,
when his statue was carried – as it was on his anniversary – from
Athens to Eleusis, and again from Eleusis to Athens, at the time
of the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries; and that this
procession, whose dust now floated along the coast and filled the
air before them, and whose united voices rose to the sky, was
coming from the city of Ceres, on its return to Athens, after the
celebration of the ceremony. As Attica was now abandoned by
the Greeks, this appearance seemed more than human. He
foretold, at the same time, that if the dust and cloud moved
toward Salamis, the Gods themselves were coming to fight
against the Great King, and that the destruction of his host was
inevitable.
The road on which this procession then seemed to move, and
to which we shall digress from our mountain position for a short
time in our way to Eleusis, the place from which it appeared to
come, is in some respects the most remarkable in Greece. It
witnessed, year by year, in the autumnal season, the solemnity to
which w have just alluded. Along it at that time, on the sixth day
of the Eleusinian mysteries, in the figure of Bacchus – not the
Theban deity, but the youthful son of Ceres and the giver of the
vine to man – crowned with a chaplet of myrtle, and holding a
torch in his hand, was carried in procession; he was followed
over hill and plain by thousands of worshippers, clad in festal
attire, and wearing garlands of the same leaves as those which
were woven around the head of the object of their devotion, and
chanting his praises in strains of solemn and harmonious
adoration.
The stone pavement of the ancient road which this procession
followed, still remains entire in some parts of the plain near the
sea coast; on its surface the tracks of the wheels which passed
over it in former days are yet visible. They remind us of the slow
trains of Eleusinian cars in which the women of Athens went
along it from their own city to that of Eleusis, at which we are
now arriving by the same route.
But not merely the women of Athens – the mothers of
Miltiades, of Cimon, of Themistocles and of Pericles – nor only
the youth and men of the city have passed over this paved way to
visit and participate in the most august ceremony of the whole
heathen world; for these stones have also been trodden by the feet
of her poets, her statesmen and her philosophers, all tending to
the same place, and on the same errand; and, again, not merely by
them, but also by Kings and Princes, by Satraps of Asia, and by
Monarchs of Egypt, by Consuls and Praetors of Rome, and by her
wise, and eloquent, and learned men – by her Augustus Caesars,
her Ciceros, her Horaces and her Virgils – going on their way to
Eleusis to pay their homage to the awful Deities of that place, and
to receive, as they believed, by initiation into the mysteries of
their worship, both a clearer knowledge of the most abstruse and
perplexing questions which could be presented to the intellectual
contemplation of Man, and also a fuller assurance of their own
personal felicity both in the present and in the future world.
To this road on which we are now travelling, a remarkable
contrast is presented in character, scenery, and circumstances, by
that of the Capital of Italy which bore the same name as this
which leads from Athens to Eleusis. The Sacred Way of Rome,
we mean to say, affords a remarkable parallel to the Sacred Way
of Athens. These two roads, it is worthy of observation, are, as it
were, the representations of the peculiar character, genius and
influence of the people to which they respectively belong. Each
of them exhibits to the eye and mind of the traveller along them
the very objects which would be selected as the most appropriate
characteristics of the pursuits and tastes, the qualifications and
the achievements, by which each of the two nations in question
was peculiarly distinguished.
The Via Sacra of Rome starts from the Colosseum; it passes
under Arches of triumph; it traverses the Roman Forum and
terminates in the Capitol. Thus it begins its course with pointing
to the scene of the gladiatorial shows which afforded savage
pleasure to the assembled thousands of the imperial city in that
vast Amphitheatre, that splendid disgrace of Rome. By the
triumphal arches which span it, it refers to the military conquests
which gained for Rome the title of Mistress of the World; it
speaks of the cars of the conqueror, of the captives in chains
which passed over it, of the triumphal procession of victorious
armies which moved along it, laden with spoil, and decorated
with trophies won from the most distant regions of the earth.
Again, the Rostra and Senate House of the Forum through which
it passes, supply a memorial of the grave and dignified eloquence
and wisdom which controlled the people and guided the senate of
Rome; of that eloquence and wisdom which governed provinces,
and ratified peace, and made laws, and retuned answers to
foreign kings and nations; and, lastly, from the summit of the
Capitol, whither all these triumphal processions tended, as to the
goal and limit of their course, to offer prayers and spoils and
thanks after their victories to the Capitoline Jove, it seems, as it
were, audibly to declare that the consummation of the hopes and
aspirations of Rome was military glory; that conquest and empire
were her Mysteries; that they were the Temple to which she
marched along her Sacred Way; that this was the initiation by
which she raised herself above the nations of the earth – this the
Apotheosis by which She became partaker of the immortal
dignity of he own Deities.
But the Sacred Way which leads from Athens to Eleusis was of
a very different character. It issued from the western and
principal gate of the Athenian city into the most beautiful of her
suburbs: here, in the Ceramicus, as it was called, were the
monuments of her great men, monuments decorated with the
ornaments of poetry and of sculpture; and among them the
orations were spoken over the graves of those who had fallen in
their country's cause, which made their fate an object to their
survivors and friends rather of congratulation than of grief. It
then pursued its course through the olive groves of Plato and of
the Academy; it crossed the stream of the Cephissus; it mounted
the hill of Aegaleos; it passed by the temples of Apollo and of
Venus, and descended into the Sacred Plain; it ran through a long
avenue of tombs of priests, and poets, and philosophers; it
coasted the Bay of Eleusis, which, girt as it is on all sides (with
the exception of two narrow channels) by majestic mountains,
presents the appearance of a beautiful lake; and at length, as the
termination of its course,, it arrived at the foot of the ample hills
of Eleusis, crowned with marble porticos and spacious courts,
and with the stupendous pile of the temple of Ceres, celebrated as
the work of the most skilful architects, and venerable for its
sanctity and its mysteries, which claimed for Eleusis the title of
the religious Capital of Greece.
In its course it had passed within the sight of Colonus on the
right, and of Salamis on the left, one the birth-place of Sophocles,
and the other that of Euripides; and it ended at Eleusis, which
was the native city of Aeschylus.
Thus did the Sacred Way, in its commencement, its career,
and its conclusion, make an appeal to those peculiar objects both
of nature and of art, which obtained for Athens a moral,
intellectual and religious supremacy over the nations of the
world, of greater extent and permanence than that military sway
which was exercised over them by the invincible arm of Rome.
Of the temple of CERES at ELEUSIS few vestiges now
remain. It stood on an elevated platform at the eastern extremity
of the rock on which the city was built. It was approached by a
portico similar to that at the western side of the Acropolis of
Athens. Thus these two PROPYLAEA, which were both the
works of Pericles, looked towards each other.
The entrance through this vestibule led to another of smaller
dimensions, which opened into a vast enclosure in which the
temple itself stood, which was the largest in Greece. It was faced
on the south by a portico of twelve columns, and the interior of
the cella was divided by four rows of pillars paralleled to each
other and to the portico, and on which the roof of the fabric was
supported.
Aeschylus was summoned before the religious tribunal of the
Areopagus at Athens, on a charge of having divulged, in one of
his dramas, the secrets which were revealed to the initiated in this
place; and the traveller Pausanias was forbidden in a dream to
communicate the information he received here with respect to the
mystical signification of some of the objects of adoration at
Eleusis; nor are the expressions of Horace on the same subject an
insignificant indication of the awe with which men shrunk from
the sacrilege, of which he who made such a revelation was
supposed to be guilty. It would, therefore, be a vain and
presumptuous enterprise to attempt to describe at this time what
they who alone could tell were least willing to express.
But some of the external circumstances which attended the
celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries are not involved in the
same obscurity. We are still enabled, while standing within the
sacred enclosure, and on the marble pavement of the temple of
Ceres, to revive in our minds some of the scenes which gave to
this place, in ancient times, a solemnity and a splendour, the
impression of which was never erased from the memory of those
who had once felt its effects.
The fifth day of the Sacred Festival was distinguished by a
magnificent procession of the initiated, who were clad in purple
robes and bore n their heads crowns of myrtle: the Priests led the
way into the interior of the temple through the southern portico
which has been described. The Worshippers followed in pairs,
each bearing a torch, and in solemn silence. But the evening of
the tenth day of this august pageant was the most remarkable: it
brought with it the consummation of the mystic ceremonies. On it
the initiated were admitted for the first time to a full enjoyment
of the privileges which the Mysteries conferred.
Having gone through the previous rites of fasting and of
purification, they were clad in the sacred fawn-skin, and led at
eventide into the vestibule of the Temple. The doors of the
building itself were as yet closed. Then the profane were
commanded by the priests, with a loud voice, to retire. The
worshippers remained alone. Presently strange sounds were
heard; dreadful apparitions, as of dying men, were seen;
lightnings flashed through the thick darkness in which they were
enveloped, and thunders rolled around them; light and gloom
succeeded each other with interchange. After these preliminaries,
at length the doors of the Temple were thrown open. Its interior
shone with one blaze of light. The votaries were then led to the
feet of the Statue of the Goddess, who was clad in the most
gorgeous attire; in her presence their temples were encircled by
the hands of the priests with the sacred wrath of myrtle, which
was intended to direct their thoughts to the myrtle groves of the
blessed in those happy isles to which they would be carried after
death: their eyes were dazzled with the most vivid and beautiful
colours, and their ears charmed with the most melodious sounds,
both rendered more enchanting by their contrast with those
fearful and ghastly objects which had just before been offered to
their senses. They were now admitted to behold visions of the
Creation of the Universe, to see the workings of that divine
agency by which the machine of the world was regulated and
controlled, to contemplate the state of society which prevailed
upon the earth before the visit of Ceres to Attica, an to witness
the introduction of agriculture, of sound laws, and of gentle
manners, which followed the steps of that goddess; to recognize
the immortality of the soul, a typified by the concealment of corn
sown in the earth, by its revival in the green blade, and by its full
ripeness in the golden harvest; or, as the same idea was otherwise
expressed, by the abduction of Proserpine the daughter of Ceres,
to the region of darkness, in order to spend an equal time in the
realms of light and joy. Above all, the were invited to view the
spectacle of that happy state in which they themselves, the
initiated, were to exist hereafter. These revelations contained the
greatest happiness to which man could aspire in this life, and
assured him of such bliss as nothing could exceed or diminish, in
the next.
We retrace our steps eastward to our station on Mount
Aegaleos and pursuing its range in a northerly direction, we
arrive at the north-west angle of the plain of Athens, and at the
road which leads from it into Boeotia through a narrow defile
formed by Mount Aegaleos on the south, and Parnes on the north.
The fortress of PHYLE, which guarded this pass, still
preserves its ancient name. Its walls and towers remain in nearly
the same state as when it received, in the month of September
B.C. 404, the future deliverer of Athens, Thrasybulus, who was
here besieged by his opponents, and who sallied forth from its
gates with his small force to eject the Thirty Tyrants from the
city, and to raise Athens from the state of degradation to which it
had been reduced by the Lacedaemonians at the close of the
Peloponnesian war. From the lofty eminence on which this castle
stands, the eye enjoys a magnificent prospect of the Plain and
Citadel of Athens, from which Phyle is distant about ten miles –
objects which, thus presented to their gaze, doubtless inspired
Thrasybulus and his followers, when they were stationed here,
with fresh patriotism and courage, and stimulated them with an
enthusiastic desire to liberate their country from the unworthy
bondage in which it was enthralled.
From Phyle, Thrasybulus descended into the Athenian Plain,
with a band of seven hundred men. His first aim was the town of
Acharnae, which lies at the south-east of that fortress. It is six
miles from Athens, and was the largest and most important of the
one hundred and seventy-four Demi or Boroughs of Attica. Here
he defeated his antagonists; this victory enabled him to proceed
without interruption to the harbour of Athens, the Peiraeus, from
which he expelled the forces of the Tyrants and was thus
furnished with the means of effecting an entrance into the city
itself, and of rescuing it from their hands. The name of Acharnae
is connected with one of the earliest and most agreeable of the
surviving productions of the great comic poet of Athens. Its size
and its situation – the former placing it, as has been said, at the
head of the municipal towns of Attica, the latter exposing it to
aggression from all the routes which led the Lacedaemonians
across the Athenian frontier, as it were, at the walls of Acharnae
– were no doubt the reasons that suggested to Aristophanes the
choice of inhabitants of Acharnae as fit representatives of the
sufferings which were undergone by the agricultural population
of his country at the commencement o the Peloponnesian war,
and which the citizens of this place were so eager to avenge.
The view is presented to us from our position at Phyle,
reminds us very significantly of the particular privations which
were sustained by them, when compelled to quit their farms and
homes, and to take up their abode in a confined lodging within
the walls of the city. It shows us, beneath this hill, the vineyards
which they cultivated, which supplied them both with occupation
and refreshment, and which were rudely laid waste by the
violence of the invader: it exhibits to us the estates which
supplied them with all the necessaries of life; it shows us the site
of the rural shrines and altars before which, at the season of the
vintage or of harvest, they paid their grateful homage to the
protecting Deities of the soil; while, above us, we look upon the
mountain which they often ascended, to collect among its
thickets the freight of holm-oak, of lentisk and other shrubs and
brushwood, which served, when converted into charcoal, as an
important object to the Acharnians both of traffic and of use.
Resuming our position on Mount Parnes, we pursue our course
along the ridge of that mountain in an easterly direction.
We are now following the line of the northern frontier of
Attica. To compare smaller things with great, Mount Parnes was
to this country what the Alps are to Italy. But not merely was this
mountain range a line of natural demarcation, which severed the
land of Attica on the south from the vale of Boeotia on the north
– so that in all the political revolutions which this country
underwent during the period of its independence, this distinction
was never erased – but also, what is more remarkable, it served,
if we may so say, as one of the degrees or parallels of latitude
which were drawn on the surface of the intellectual Map of
Greece. It was like a long and lofty Wall built in a beautiful
garden, and stretching from east to west, along and up the south
side of which fruit-trees and flowering plants are trained, which
deck it with their bright blossoms of white, red and purple, with
their luxuriant foliage, and their golden produce, all of which are
rendered more beautiful by the cheerfulness of the sun beaming
upon them in full lustre; while the north side of the same wall is
cold and blank. So, while in Attica – the south side of Mount
Parnes – every thing flowered and ripened which is fair and
excellent in the intellect of man, – while there a Phaeacian
garden, teeming with mental produce, flourished in a perpetual
spring, – on the other side of the same hill the picture was
reversed. Boeotia, the country on the north of Mount Parnes, was
as remarkable for its intellectual barrenness, as Attica was for its
fertility: it was the bare side of the mountain wall. It seemed as if
Nature, which made Attica a country of sterile hills and cliffs,
and gave rich fields and pastures to Boeotia, had desired to adjust
the balance, by denying intellectual wealth in the one case, where
she had conferred physical, and by compensating for the balance
of physical, by the abundance of intellectual, in the other.
Aristophanes, in his Play of the NEPHELAE, brings his
goddesses, the CLOUDS, from the heights of Mount Parnes,
when, in compliance with the invocation of Socrates, they
descend to visit the earth. Quitting their aerial station on this lofty
mountain, they soar over the Athenian Plain, and, floating across
the peaked hill of LYCABETTUS, at the north-east extremity of
the city, and above the town itself, and the rock of the Acropolis,
they fly over the PARTHENON, and at last alight on the stage of
the theatre on the south side of the citadel. Before the commence
their flight, they join their voices in a choral strain, replete with
poetical beauty, which furnishes conclusive evidence that the
poet who composed it might have been as distinguished for
lyrical as he was for his dramatic excellence; that, in a word, he
might have been a Pindar, if he had not been am Aristophanes.
While listening to the beautiful language and melodious
harmony of this song, the audience might almost imagine itself to
be placed in the same elevated position as was occupied by those
who united in giving it utterance; and thence it might seem to
contemplate all the noble and fair spectacles which they there see
and describe. Together with the Chorus of Clouds, it might
appear to look down upon the objects of which they speak as then
visible to themselves – to see the land of Pallas stretched out
before them, and the lofty Temples and Statues of Athens at their
feet; to trace the long trains of worshippers in festal array going
over the hills to the Sacred Mysteries of Eleusis; to follow the
sacred processions winding through the streets to the Acropolis
of the Athenian city; to witness the banquets and sacrifices on
solemn holidays; to behold the crowds seated in the Theatre at
the beginning of spring, and viewing the dances and listening to
the melodies which there gave an additional charm to that season
of festivity and joy.
Mount Parnes was the natural barrier which protected the
Athenian territory from foreign invasion on the north. But, as a
military fortress, when it falls into the hands of an enemy,
becomes then the cause of danger to those whom it was before
accustomed to defend, so this mountain, when the foes of Attica
had obtained possession of a stronghold upon it, proved as much
fraught with peril to the Athenians, as it had before been
productive of advantage.
For, pursuing our course eastward along its heights, we arrive
at a point, about ten miles distant from the fortress of Phyle,
above described, and discover the ruins of some ancient walls on
a circular and isolated hill, near the little village of TATOI, and
which projects from the mountain where we now are. It stands at
a distance of twelve miles to the north-east of Athens, and is
clearly visible from it. These ruined walls of which we speak are
the remains of the celebrated fortress of DECELEA. In the year
B.C. 413, the nineteenth of the Peloponnesian war, this hill was
fortified by the Lacedaemonians, at the instigation of Alcibiades,
and under the command of their general, Agis. From that time
forth to the conclusion of the war, they remained during the
winter months within the Athenian frontier, instead of retiring
from it at that season, as they had formerly done, with the
intention of returning to invade it again at the commencement of
spring.
The particular position also which they occupied on this
eminence of Mount Parnes, furnished them with the opportunity
of laying waste the most productive parts of the Athenian plain,
and of maintaining themselves with its resources: it enabled them
also to intercept the supplies which were conveyed from Euboea
to Athens, and to reduce their enemies to the necessity of
abandoning the direct and expeditious route across the mountain
passes of Parnes, for the dangerous and circuitous passage round
the Sunian promontory
From these circumstances it arose, that nine years after its
occupation by the Lacedaemonians this small hill proved fatal to
the liberty of Athens.
Decelea was a Spartan camp in Attica; and a stationary one in
the most important part of that country. A year only before its
erection, the comic poet of Athens had exhibited to an audience
of his fellow citizens a city built in the air by two Athenian
emigrants, for the purpose of intercepting, in its passage from
earth to heaven, the sacrificial steam which arose from the altars
of men to the mansions of the Gods. When the inhabitants of
Athens enjoyed the spectacle of this aerial town, presented to
their eyes in that drama, they little thought that they were about
to suffer in the sane way from the erection of a similar barrier in
their territory. The Decelea of Agis and the Lacedaemonians
proved to Athens itself in reality, what the Nephelococcygia of
Peisthetaerus ad Euripides was in the fiction of the Aristophanic
comedy to its Deities.
It is worthy of remark, that the two principal passes from
Attica to Boeotia over Mount Parnes were guarded by two forts,
one at the north-west and the other at the north-eastern angle of
the Athenian plain, and nearly equidistant from Athens and from
each other. These are Phyle and Decelea. The remains of both are
still distinctly visible. They are both distinguished by the very
important figure which they make in Athenian history. Both have
been noticed above. The latter, as was observed, was one of the
main causes of the decline and fall of Athens at the close of the
Peloponnesian war: by means of the former she was raised again
from the degradation into which she had then sunk. What she lost
by Decelea and the treachery of Alcibiades, she recovered by
Phyle and the patriotism of Thrasybulus.
Not far from Decelea was the important town of APHIDNAE,
one of the twelve, one of the twelve independent and confederate
cities of which the Athenian Republic was composed before the
age of THESEUS, who united them in one body, of which
Athens was the head. It is not unworthy of observation, that,
while Decelea was connected with the calamities and subjugation
of Athens, and with the misfortunes and indignities which she
suffered at the hands of her rival Sparta, it was from the
neighbouring town of Aphidnae that three individuals issued ,
who liberated from a state of bondage both Athens and Sparta
herself. The same city which gave TYRTAEUS to Lacedaemon,
sent HARMODIUS and ARISTOGEITON to Athens. They were
all citizens of Aphidnae. It was at Aphidnae that HELEN was
concealed, when she was brought by Theseus into Attica. Here
she was discovered by her brothers Castor and Pollux, who were
guided to the spot by the inhabitants of Decelea. Thus these two
places are connected with each other, and with the earliest history
of Attica.
Standing on a spot which derives from this circumstance an
interest of no ordinary nature, and looking upon the soil and
surrounding objects of a place, which has been honoured by the
presence of persons whom Time has invested with a kind of
mysterious dignity, whose names have been famous in the
mouths of men for three thousand years, a scene which has been
visited by Theseus, by the Dioscuri and by Helen – and at the
same time surveying the view which from this lofty eminence we
command of the Plain of Athens, stretching from the hills of
Parnes to the harbour of the Peiraeus, we are naturally led to
indulge in speculations on the aspect which this country wore at
that distant epoch to which we allude, and on some of the most
important vicissitudes, subsequent to that time, which it has
undergone.
Fabulous as the narratives of that period confessedly are, and
prone as the inhabitants of Attica were to enhance their national
glory by adorning its annals with fictitious embellishments, yet it
is not difficult to trace some footsteps of truth in those legendary
records, which they have handed down to us, of the most distant
ages of their own history.
The earliest Monarch of this country, whose name is
preserved, is CECROPS. Backward, beyond him, historical
tradition did not go. He was therefore an AUTOCHTON or
Indigenous – the offspring of the earth. The form under which he
was on that account represented has been above noticed. In his
days, it is said, the Gods began to choose favourite spots among
the dwellings of men for their own residence or, as the expression
seems to mean, particular Deities were worshipped with especial
homage in particular cities. It was at this time that MINERVA
and NEPTUNE strove for the possession of Attica. The question
was to be determined by the natural principle of priority of
occupation. Cecrops, the King of the country at that period, was
called upon to arbitrate between them in this controversy. It was
asserted by Neptune, that he had appropriated the territory to
himself by planting his TRIDENT on the rock of the
ACROPOLIS at Athens, before the land had been claimed by
Minerva. He pointed to it there standing erect, and to the salt
spring which had then issued and was flowing from the fissure of
the cliff, which had opened for the reception of the trident.
On the other hand, Minerva alleged that she had taken
possession of the country at a still earlier period than had been
done by the rival Deity. She appealed, in support of her claim, to
the OLIVE, which had sprung at her command from the soil, and
which was growing near the fountain produced by the hand of
Neptune from the same place.
Cecrops was required to attest the truth of her assertion. He
had been witness of the act: and he therefore decided in favour of
Minerva who then became the tutelary Deity of Athens. It is not
difficult to perceive that in this tradition a record is preserved of
the rivalry – which may be considered as the natural production
of the soil, the form, and the situation of Attica itself – between
the two classes of its population, the one devoted to maritime
pursuits, and aiming at commercial eminence, the other contented
with its own domestic resources, and preferring the tranquil
occupations of agricultural and pastoral life, which were typified
by the emblematical symbol of peace. The victory of Minerva,
which it commemorates, is a true and significant expression of
the condition of this country and of the habits of its people, from
the days of Cecrops to those of Themistocles.
Again, as a settled form of religious Worship may be inferred
from this tradition to have commenced at the period to which it
relates, so we may reasonably conclude that the influence of Law
was felt, and that the sanctions of Justice were recognised by a
people whose king was called upon to decide a suit in which the
parties at issue were two rival Deities, and who founded his
decision upon the great principle of equity, on which the safe
tenure of all property depends. The same inference is supplied by
the mythological narration, that when, during the reign of
Cecrops, another Deity, Mars, was accused of homicide, the
court, before which he was brought to be tried upon the charges,
was the Athenian tribunal of the AREOPAGUS.
We do not here mean to assert that the legends to which we are
alluding are the productions of the periods, or contemporary with
the persons, to which they particularly refer; far from it: but
granting, as we readily do, that they first made their appearance
in a later age, still, if we trace them in the chronological order in
which they are presented to our notice by Athenians themselves,
we may fairly regard them as the expressions of the popular
belief, entertained by those who had the best opportunities of
forming an opinion upon ten subject, concerning the different
stages of their own history.
Proceeding further in our Mythical inquiries, we seem to
recognise the trace of an attempt to unite the inhabitants of the
Hills with those of the Plains of Attica – who before this period
had probably been at variance with each other – in the tradition
which records that CRANAUS, the successor of Cecrops,
married PEDIAS, and that the issue of their wedlock was
ATTHIS: – in other words, that Attica was then formed by the
union of the two districts which are aptly signified by the
particular names – the one signifying rugged, the other,
belonging to the plain – which are there assigned to Cranaus and
his wife.
This state of prosperity does not appear to have been of long
duration; for Atthis is said to have died in early youth; and the
flood of Deucalion – whether a physical or political revolution,
who shall venture to determine? – is related to have inundated the
country during the reign of Cranaus, who was himself driven
from the throne by the king next in succession, whose name,
Amphictyon – a collector of neighbouring people in one
community – appears to indicate an attempt made in this, the
next, age, to organize afresh the social elements which had been
disturbed by the convulsions of the previous generation, and to
combine them together in one federal body.
This design seems to have been attended with success, and to
have produced results favourable to the cultivation of the arts of
civilized life. For the immediate successor of Amphictyon, and
the representative of the state of the Athenian nation, as it existed
in that period, was Erichtonius. It seems reasonable to consider
these Attic kings, not as individuals, but rather as
personifications, if we may so call them, of the Athenian people,
in the different eras of their early history. Ericthonius was, in the
language of mythology, the son of Vulcan and Minerva; or, as
that tradition may be interpreted, it was in this age and under its
auspices that the manual labours, which enjoyed the especial
patronage of those two Deities, began to attract the attention, and
to assume the importance, which afterwards rendered them the
source of affluence and the glory to the possessors of the
Athenian soil.
Not inconsistent with this account is the other tradition which
ascribes to Ericthonius the honour of being the first to yoke four
horses to a car; a remarkable circumstance in the barren land of
Attica, where the horse was reared with difficulty, and
maintained at considerable expense, and which was therefore the
most expressive indication that could have been adopted of the
greater diffusion of wealth consequent on the successful
cultivation of those arts and manufactures which began to
flourish at this period.
The tranquillity which then prevailed – expressed, we believe,
by the assertion that Ericthonius was succeeded by his son, and
neither expelled from his throne as his predecessors Cranaus and
Amphictyon had been by the persons who immediately
succeeded them, nor followed, as Cecrops, by another indigenous
Monarch – not only conduced to the progress and successful
development of the Arts, but also led, as might have been
anticipated, to the adoption of new modes of tillage, which
enriched the Athenian husbandman with a greater variety and
abundance of agricultural produce derived from his own soil.
Therefore it is that the visits of CERES and of BACCHUS,
the givers of Corn and Win, are said to have been paid to Attica
at this time. Perhaps too, we may be allowed to assume, as
another result from the peaceful character of this period, that
greater attention was then given to the appearances of Nature, to
the vicissitudes of the elements and to the forms and character of
the other objects of Creation, than had hitherto been the case; and
that the legends in which the Monarch of that time, Ericthonius,
is raised after his death to a place among the celestial
constellations, as the HENIOCHUS, or Charioteer, and in which
his contemporary ICARUS, the entertainer of Bacchus on the
occasion of his visit to Attica, and his daughter ERIGONE, are
admitted to participate in the same honour, are proofs of the
observation with which the phenomena of the heavens were
supposed then to have been regarded, while the story of Tereus
and Procne and her sister Philomela, which belongs to the same
period, suggest that the more humble objects of the lower world
were not treated with neglect.
A new and important era of Athenian history commences with
the reign of THESEUS, whose name gave rise to the above
remarks, and to whom we will now direct our thoughts.
PISISTRATUS, tyrant of Athens, in his revision of the
Homeric Poems, is said to have interpolated a verse which
characterized THESEUS and his friend Pirithous as sons of the
immortal Gods; and he is alleged by the same historian who
makes this assertion to have expunged a line from the works of
Hesiod, which mentioned a fact not very creditable to the
memory of the Athenian hero, namely, the reason by which he
was induced, in his return from Crete to Athens, to abandon
Ariadne on the desert island of NAXOS.
That all Athenians themselves felt a personal interest I all that
concerned the history and character of Theseus, is clear from
these circumstances, as well as from other evidence. The
incidents of his story which reflected honour upon him were
subjects of national pride to them; they strove with him, as it
were, in his struggles, fought by his side in his battles, and
triumphed in his conquests. It was, in a word, the ancient People
of Athens personified by himself.
This being the case, the narrative of his adventures and
exploits becomes an object of peculiar interest, not so much as
presenting facts of historical value in themselves – for they rest
upon evidence of too partial a kind to allow then to claim this
character – but as exhibiting to our eye a picture of the ancient
population of Attica, as drawn originally by their own hands, and
retouched and embellished by those of their posterity.
It is not hereby intimated that all belief in the incidents of the
biography of Theseus, as detailed in the popular records of
Athenian traditions, is vain and groundless: it is, on the contrary,
more rational to suppose that a people eminently distinguished
for its critical perception of propriety in all the imitative arts,
would not have failed, in this national portrait, to adopt a real
model, and to sketch from it an outline not inconsistent with the
truth; and that subsequently it would have studiously
endeavoured to fill up the lineaments thus correctly drawn with
lights and shadows harmoniously adapted to them, and have been
careful to introduce nothing that was not in due keeping with the
tone and character of the age to which the subject of the design
belonged.
As a proof of this assertion, we may refer to those particular
circumstances in the life of Theseus, which exhibit him and his
countrymen in an unfavourable light. His biography is not a mere
panegyric. It records both his ingratitude to Ariadne, and the
ingratitude of his country to him. In it, the Athenian hero leaves
his benefactress on a desolate shore; and he himself is driven by
the Athenians from his kingdom into exile on the barren rock of
SCYROS. The heroine, indeed, is soon rescued from her distress
by the appearance of Bacchus, the deity of Naxos; but Theseus is
left to die in his banishment; and it was not until many centuries
had elapsed that his bones were dug up and brought with
triumphal honours to his own city, and deposited there in that
magnificent building which still survives to this day, and thus
unites the age of Theseus with our own, and was both his
Temple and his Tomb.
We are therefore inclined to believe that the character of
Theseus, as exhibited to us in the surviving remains of Athenian
tradition, may be justly considered as a representation party
historical and partly ideal of the condition of the Athenian
people, when the age of Mythology was drawing to a close, and
is founded upon a real basis of the life and exploits of an
individual. Viewed in this light, it becomes the Athenian theory
of the state in which they were wont to contemplate themselves
as existing at that early period of their history: and thus the
fabulous legends of his heroic acts assume a practical character.
They become assertions of national power exerted for great and
useful purposes in that age. His legislative enactments are
expressions of their own civil policy at hat time.
In these accounts, Theseus is called the founder of the
Athenian form of popular government. To him the statesmen and
orators of later days ascribed the origin of the political privileges
enjoyed by those whom they addressed. He was said to have
organized the federal body of which the communities of Attica
were members. He united them in a civil society, of which the
Cecropian town was the head. He gave to that city, which
thenceforth became the capital of Attica, the name of ATHENS.
He instituted the PANATHENAIC festival, to commemorate this
act of union.
All these works attributed to Theseus seem to have been so
ascribed to him, as the personified representative of the State.
And not merely his public acts may be identified, as it seems,
with those of the national body, but even his private relations
appear to have been so modified as to express the connection of
the Athenian people with objects analogous to those which were
contemplated by those relations. Those the inviolable friendship
which united Theseus and Pirithous seems to have represented
the ancient national amity which subsisted between the two
countries to which these two heroes belonged, namely, Athens
and Thessaly. Again, in the rivalries of the Athenian king was
shadowed out the history of popular jealousies. The object of his
ambition is represented as a desire to emulate the deeds of his
contemporary and relative, Hercules. If the latter destroyed the
monsters which devastated the land of Greece, Theseus did the
same. If Hercules sailed in the Argo, Theseus belonged to the
same crew. If he joined the hunters of the Calydonian boar,
Theseus was there also; if Hercules is clad in the skin of the lion
of Nemea, Theseus wears the hide of the Marathonian bull; if
Hercules bears a club, so does Theseus; if the Olympian Games
are founded by him, Theseus institutes the Isthmian; if Hercules
erects columns at Gades, Theseus does the same at the isthmus of
Corinth.
In all these particulars, the real competitors, whose emulation
is expressed by them, are not so much Hercules and Theseus, as
the nations of which the two heroes are representatives. They are
either Thebes and Athens, or Argos and Athens; and thus these
legends are of value, as indicating the political relation which
subsisted between these nations respectively at the period when
the traditions in questions originated.
The antiquity of a similar feeling of jealousy which estranged
Athens from Sparta, is proved by the story which represents the
Spartan Helen detained as a prisoner at Aphidnae in Attica, and
committed by Theseus to the Custody of Aethra, his mother, till
his country is invaded by her two brothers, Castor and Pollux,
who rescue her from her captivity. A different feeling was
entertained by the people of Athens towards the people of
Troezen; and this is expressed by the tradition which leaves
Theseus to pass his early youth under the tuition of his father-inlaw Pittheus, the wise and virtuous monarch, as he is described,
of that country; which sends him to Troezen as a place of refuge
during his temporary exile from Attica; and which consigns
Hippolytus, the son of Theseus and the Amazon Hippolyta, for
his education to the same place. In connection with these
accounts, it will be remembered, that Troezen was the principal
asylum of a part of the population of Attica, when driven from
their country by the Persians before the battle of Salamis: and,
perhaps, these Athenian traditions themselves are allusive to that
fact, and are grateful memorials of it. It may be added, as a
further indication, of this intimacy, that Sphettus and
Anaphlystus, two important cities on the western coast of Attica,
are said, in mythological language, to be the sons of Troezen.
Several particulars have been referred to in which the
superiority Theseus over his rival Hercules is evinced. Hercules
indeed remained without a competitor in deeds of physical force.
The palm of greater excellence in athletic exercises was willingly
conceded by Athens to Thebes; and indeed, the eminence of the
latter in this respect was regarded by its more intellectual
neighbour and rival as one of the causes that conduced to give it
a savage character, which was neither to be envied nor admired.
But Hercules was no statesman; he framed no laws, settled no
form of government, organised no religious or civil societies: but
all these things Theseus did. Above all, Hercules gave no
encouragement to the arts: but Theseus, on the other hand, was
the friend – he is called the cousin and brother – of Daedalus,
who formed the Cretan Labyrinth for Minos, and first endued
statues with the powers of motion and of sight: he was the
favourite, the son, of Neptune he built ships and encouraged
commerce; he also worked mines and coined money. In al these
respects the balance is greatly in favour of the Athenian hero; or,
as it may be expressed in other words, in all the arts and sciences
which elevate the thoughts and promote the welfare of man in
social and civil life, the merits of Attica are asserted by these
traditions to have far eclipsed the pretensions of her Boeotian
neighbour.
To return from the three excursions in the regions of the early
history of this country to a survey of the scenery which suggested
them – we pursue our course from Aphidnae in an easterly
direction over the high land of Mount Parnes till we arrive at the
sea coast, which is distant about ten miles from the ruins of that
place. The cliffs above the shore present magnificent views of the
channel of the Euripus and of the bold and rocky coast of
Euboea, sweeping in a varied line, and terminating at the south
on the bay of Carystus and in the middle of Mount Ocha. The
country over which we pass on our way to the sea, and at a little
distance from it, is covered with thick clusters of heath, arbutus
and lentisk: there are scarcely any trees, with the exception of the
mountain-pine and the wild pear; and no human dwelling is
visible.
In this solitary scene, at about half a mile from the sea, and
three hundred feet above it, is a rectangular terrace, of which two
sides, namely those on the north and east, are faced with massive
blocks of white Pentelic marble, fitted to each other with the
nicest symmetry. The eastern wall is one hundred and fifty feet in
length: it rises eight feet above the soil below it, which slopes
down gently to the sea.
This terrace was a Sacred Enclosure. On it two temples
formerly stood; they belonged to the city of RHAMNUS, which
lay below them on a circular knoll upon the sea shore. The
direction in which they were placed was from north to south; the
remains of both are considerable.
Whether they ever existed contemporaneously in a perfect
state is a matter of much uncertainty. Had this been the case, the
buildings, as is clear from their actual foundations, would have
been almost contiguous without being parallel to each other, and
would thus have presented a very irregular and unsymmetrical
appearance, for which there was no reason, on account of the
ample dimensions of the area around them.
Of these two fabrics, that to the west was a very simple cella,
built in antis, as it is called, that is, with but one portico, and that
formed by two columns placed between two pilasters, in which
the walls of the cella terminate.
This temple was only thirty-five feet long, and twenty-one
broad: it was constructed of polygonal masses of marble; of the
four walls which formed the cella some portions are still
standing. The entrance to the temple was on the south; on each
side of it, under the portico supported by then two columns and
antae above mentioned, was a marble throne, each having an
inscription on the plinth, from which it appears that the chair on
the hand of the door was dedicated to NEMESIS, and that on the
left to THEMIS. Within the temple was a marble statue of very
ancient workmanship, which represented the Goddess to whom
the temple was dedicated.
Adjacent to this temple, on the east, stood a second building of
the same kind, but of a much more magnificent style and larger
dimensions. It was a peripteral hexastyle, that is, it was
surmounted on all sides with columns, having six at each end,
namely, at the pronaos, or front, on the south, and at the
posticum, or hinder porch, on the north: there were twelve
columns on each flank; in both the temples, these were of the
Doric style. This latter temple measured seventy-five in length
and thirty-seven in breadth. Within it, some fragments of a
colossal statue are still visible.
From the testimonies of ancient authors, especially Pausanias,
and from the fact that the town of Rhamnus, to which these
temples belonged, was under special patronage of the Goddess
NEMESIS, and also from the language of an ancient inscription
still extant in this larger temple, which speaks of an honorary
statue of a young Athenian there dedicated to her, it is clear that
this latter building was consecrated to that Deity. This large and
splendid building was, we say, the Temple of Nemesis.
The smaller fabric first noticed has generally been supposed to
have been the Temple of THEMIS; but there is no ground for
this opinion, except the circumstances that one of the marble
chairs, noticed above as standing in its vestibule, is inscribed to
her: but it should be observed, that the chair on the left of the
entrance is dedicated to THEMIS, while that on the right of it
was sacred to NEMESIS. In addition to this, since the awkward
position of the building with respect to each other suggests the
belief that they never both existed in a state of integrity at the
same time, and as it is just to conclude that the Goddess of
Rhamnus was never without a temple in this place from the time
when the spot itself was first dedicated to her, we are inclined to
believe that the older and smaller temple was also consecrated to
the same Goddess.
It appears then probable that when this building fell into decay
– whether from lapse of time or, as is more likely, from hostile
violence – and when the inhabitants of Rhamnus had advanced
both in wealth and architectural skill, that then they thought fit to
erect another temple of a more magnificent and spacious kind in
honour of their own Deity, while their respect for antiquity, and
their veneration for the consecrated building ion which she had
been worshipped by their forefathers, caused them to retain, in its
actual state, the smaller and simpler fabric which stood by its
side.
The ruins, too, of this ancient temple, if it had been laid waste
by human force, were perhaps preserved in their dismantled
condition, for a particular purpose, by the inhabitants of
Rhamnus: for they were of service, on the one hand, as
stimulating their indignation and courage against those who had
thus treated them; and on the other, as conjuring Nemesis, the
Goddess of Retribution, by a silent and perpetual prayer, that she
would aid them in repelling and chastising those enemies who
had thus violated her dignity and profaned her worship.
It is impossible to contemplate the ruins of these temples and
the peculiar features of their site without being impressed with a
deep feeling of admiration for the spirit and intelligence which
set apart this spot for purposes of religious devotion. Let us
imagine this scene as it existed in former days. Then, these
buildings were standing – the larger of them, at least, in its full
beauty – on an enclosed terrace, supported by long and high
walls of pure marble. This was their pedestal. They were
surrounded by a sacred grove of green and fragrant shrubs,
among which were statues and altars. One of these two buildings
reminded the spectator of the simplicity of earlier days by its
chaste and severe style: the other charmed him by the size and
beauty of its structure, by its long lines of columns, its lofty
pediments, the richness of its sculptural decoration, and by the
brilliancy of the colouring with which they were adorned.
Beneath them, at some distance, was the Sea: on its shore, was
then city of Rhamnus, one of the strongest and most important
fortresses of Attica, to which these temples belonged. The town
stood on a peninsular knoll; it was surrounded by lofty walls of
massive stone, and was entered on the west by a gate flanked
with towers; on the southern side was its port.
From contemplating the picture which these latter objects
suggest to the imagination – from ideal visions of the military or
naval preparation which the town of Rhamnus, now lying in ruins
before us, was wont to witness in early days – from sights, such
as it then presented, of seamen hastening down to its port, and
invited to embark there by a favourable gale; or of Athenian
merchants unlading their ships and transporting their freight to
warehouses on the quay; or of travellers entering the gate of the
city, or issuing from it, we turn again to a more quiet scene, to the
view of these beautiful temples standing alone on their lofty
platform amid the shadows and the silence of their consecrated
grove.
However mistaken its object, we cannot bear to condemn, nay,
rather, we cannot but fervently approve and admire the temper of
that devotion which raised these two buildings, one of grave
simplicity, the other of sumptuous splendour, in such a scene as
this. We reverence the feeling which removed them from the
turmoil of the city, sequestered them by a local consecration from
all buildings devoted to traffic and to toil, and placed them in this
tranquil spot, which invited the worshipper to come here from the
stir of the streets below, and to taste the pleasure and enjoy the
fruits, if not of devotion, at least of meditation and repose; we
venerate the principle – a principle not of Paganism, but one of a
purer spirit speaking in a Pagan age – which in the dignified
structure and in the hollowed and peaceful precincts of these
temples at Rhamnus seems to have conceived and realized the
idea of what we may be allowed to call an architectural Sabbath,
such as a heathen could enjoy, and no Christian can despise.
We recognize, therefore, in this place one of the most
interesting specimens to be found on the soil of Greece of those
SACRED ENCLOSURES, which, from their elevation and
retirement, gave additional beauty, dignity and sanctity to the
Temples contained within them. We find, indeed, the same idea
which suggested such an arrangement, developed in other places
on a grander scale, and with greater magnificence. In a certain
sense the Acropolis of Athens was itself a hallowed TEMENOS ,
as such an enclosure was called in the language of ancient
Greece. The spacious grove of the Olympian Jove at Elis was
another of the same kind. Another example is found in the walled
platform at Eleusis, on which the Propylaea and Temple stood.
We are presented with another at Epidaurus in Argolis, where not
merely the Temple of Aesculapius and other consecrated
buildings, but also the unrivalled Theatre of Polycletus, were all
grouped together within the same precincts. At Sunium the fane
of Minerva; at Patrae that of Diana; at Corinth that of Palaemon;
at Megara that of Jove; at Sycion that of Heracles – were
combined with other fabrics in the same way. Nor was this
practice limited to Greece. We discover it on the shores of Asia
and of Sicily. At Priene, it was seen in the sacred buildings
dedicated to Minerva Polias: it exhibits itself at Selinus, where
four temples stand side by side on a raised terrace enclosed by
walls: and no one can view the line of magnificent fanes still
standing at Girgenti on their elevated platform, looking over the
sea on one side, and the site of the ancient city, from which they
are removed, on the other, without feeling a share of the pleasure
and veneration with which they were contemplated by spectators
and worshippers of ancient days, and which they inspired by their
position.
It is six miles from Rhamnus to MARATHON. The road
descends from the heights of Mount Parnes in a south-westerly
direction. The plain of Marathon lies from north-east to southwest. It is nearly in the form of a crescent, the horns of which
consist of two promontories, which project into the sea, and form
its semicircular bay, which is of the same length as the plain,
namely six miles: the breadth of the latter, in the widest or central
part of the crescent, is two miles. A line drawn from the middle
of the arc of the bay, so as to cut the centre of the arc of the plain,
will, if produced, pass upward along a valley in which is the
modern Village of Marathona, and down which a stream flows,
which nearly divides the plain into two equal parts, and then falls
into the bay: on all other sides towards the land the crescent of
the plain is bounded by rugged limestone mountains covered with
pines, olives and cedars and low shrubs, such as lentisks,
cypresses and myrtles. Near each of the horns or capes at the
northern and southern extremity of the plain are two marshes,
overgrown with reeds and rushes: between the southern of these,
and the central stream above mentioned, is a Tumulus – called
SORO, or the Mound – of red sandy earth, and ten yards in
height, two hundred in circumference and a thousand from the
shore.
The plain is dry and bare, consisting , chiefly, of arable land,
and quite flat: there are no hedges nor houses upon it; here and
there is a small white chapel, with a low door and narrow
window, and in a ruinous condition; some oxen are seen feeding
in the southern marsh, and others ploughing on the plain; rarely a
vessel is discovered at anchor in the bay, which is entirely
exposed on the east and south-east; its best anchorage is at the
centre and the north-west, where the depth is seven and eight
fathoms, gradually decreasing to the shore. Such, now, is the
aspect of the plain of Marathon. Its distance from Athens is
twenty-two miles.
The battle of Marathon, which preserved the liberties of
Greece, and perhaps of Europe, from the dominion of Persia, was
fought in the month of September, B.C. 490. The numbers of the
combatants on each side cannot be accurately determined; but the
calculation seems most probable which estimates the force of
Athens at eleven thousand heavy-armed men, while that of Persia
amounted to two hundred thousand. The Athenians possessed
neither bowmen nor cavalry, but the Persians abounded in both.
The Athenian force was drawn up so as to extend from one side
of the plain to the other, in order that the mountains on each
flank of them might prevent the cavalry of the enemy from
passing round to charge them in the rear. The right wing of the
Greeks was commanded by Callistratus of Aphidnae, who was
the polemarch, or third of the nine Archons of Athens in that
year: he was at the head of the troops of the tribe Aentis. The
whole Athenian force was so disposed that the members of the
same tribe might fight near each other – a circumstance worthy of
notice and which conduced much to stimulate the exertions, and
to increase the valour of all, by the honourable rivalry among the
different tribes, and by the encouragement given by the members
of the same tribe to each other. The tribe Oencis was led by
Miltiades; Aristides was at the head of his own, Antiochis:
Themistocles at that of Leontis: these two latter composed the
Athenian centre. Its left wing was formed of Plataeans,
amounting to one thousand men. The Athenian line was two
miles in length and about that distance from the sea shore. That
of the Persians coincided in extent with it, and was drawn up at
an equal distance from it and from the sea.
The battle was commenced by the Athenians who marched
with a rapid step over the mile of ground which separated them
from the enemy. They were the first among the Greeks who
dared to attack the Persians, or even to endure the sight of their
armour, or to look them in the face on the field of battle: for until
that day e very name of Medes had struck a panic into the hearts
of the dwellers in Greece.
Both the wings of the Greek army were successful. The centre,
which was the weakest part of the line, being necessarily
stretched beyond the usual length for the purpose above
mentioned, was broken by the Sacae and the Persians, who held
the corresponding place in the enemy’s force. The battle lasted
for many hours. Towards evening, the Greek wings returned from
the pursuit of their opponents, and closed to intercept and attack
the Persian centre in the rear. This they effected. In the meantime
their own centre rallied, and having formed itself again, it joins
with the two wings in a charge upon the Persians, from different
directions, at one and the same time. They drive the right wing of
their opponents into the marsh, and their left and centre into the
sea. They attempt to set fire to the Persian vessels in the bay, and
succeed in seizing seven of them. The greatest slaughter of the
Persians took place in the two marshes; that of the Athenians in
the plain between them: of the former, six thousand four hundred
fell; the latter lost one hundred and ninety-two men. Thus ended
the battle of Marathon.
The plain on which we now are is described by Herodotus as
one of the most favourable in Attica for the operations of cavalry;
and for this reason, he alleges, it was recommended to the Persian
general by Hippias, the exiled tyrant of Athens, who was there in
their army, both as the most convenient spot for the landing of
their troops, and also the most advantageous with the Athenians,
whose force, at that time, consisted of infantry alone. It is clear
that this character of the place must be qualified by certain
restrictions; for, as was evinced by the result of the battle, the
marshes at either extremity of the plain render it not merely
favourable, but in the contrary very inconvenient for that purpose
which he is said to have had particularly in view when he advised
such a selection. It seemed most probable that the Persians,
whose course hitherto, on their way to Greece, had been little
else than a succession of victories, little dreamt that they should
experience any check or opposition worthy of the name, in
landing on any point of the Athenian soil. They thought, as the
same historian says, that those whom they saw marching rapidly
against them, were impelled by a spirit of infatuation which
drove then to certain destruction. They therefore directed their
course to Marathon, as the nearest place of any importance after
their conquest of Euboea, not without reference indeed to the
character of the spot, but imagining that, whatever this might be,
there was little chance of their meeting with any resistance from
its inhabitants, and none whatever of defeat. This confidence in
their own strength, and their contempt of that of their adversaries,
was as beneficial to their enemies as it was destructive to
themselves.
Another disadvantage under which the Persians suffered, when
compared with their antagonists, and which much contributed to
their defeat, was the circumstance that they had a place of refuge,
and one easy of access in case of their receiving a check from the
Athenians: whereas, their opponents, on the contrary, had all the
benefit of despair: if the Athenians were not conquerors at
Marathon, from that time they themselves were lost, and their
country enslaved. Had the Persian leaders, Datis and
Artaphernes, landed all their troops, and then set fire to their
ships, the issue might have been different. As it was, their vessels
were almost a temptation to defeat. In the other case, Attica, and
with it the peninsula of Greece, might have become theirs, as the
greater part of the Greek continent already was.
The arrangement of the Athenian forces on the field of battle,
according to their respective tribes, has been already noticed. It
was the same as that recommended by Nestor to Agamemnon on
the plain of Troy. If we compare with this the fortuitous
disposition of the Persian force, and the heterogeneous elements
with which it was composed, varying in origin, habits, costume,
language and interests, not one among then fighting for liberty,
but for an absent monarch who had, perhaps, their country
reduced to bondage, we recognize another cause of moral power
in the Greek force, with which the numerical majority of the
Persian army in vain attempted to strive.
The season of the year, at which the battle was fought, and the
time of day to which it was prolonged, were both in favour of the
Athenians. In the month of September, the marshes at the two
extremities of the plain in which the greatest carnage of the
Persians took place, had probably been filled with rain; whereas,
in the summer months they are nearly dry; and had the battle
been fought at that period of the year, they would have been as
serviceable to the Persians, in giving, by their flat area, a greater
extension to the plain, and by affording more room for their
cavalry, and greater facilities for passing round and taking the
enemy in the rear, as they now proved pernicious to them. From
the direction also of the plain, it happened that at he crisis of the
conflict, which was in the evening, the Greeks had the sun behind
them, while it streamed in full radiance on the faces of their
opponents.
We have specified some of the moral and physical advantages
which the Athenians enjoyed on the field of Marathon: they had
also on their side certain religious ones, which are not to be
forgotten.
The place in which they fought was consecrated ground: it was
dedicated to Hercules. As the Greeks at Thermopylae fought
beneath the mountain, so at Marathon they contended on the
plain, of that hero. Mount Oeta was, as it were, a natural Altar,
and Marathon a Temple of Hercules. It was here, too, that his
daughter Macaria offered herself up to death, as a victim for the
liberty of her people. The fountain which supplied the marsh that
was so destructive to the Persians, bore her name. Her example
could not have been absent from the minds of the Greeks who
were about to engage near it in a similar cause. It was near this
stream that the sons of Hercules, by the assistance of the
Athenian King of that time, routed the army of their enemy,
Eurystheus. Again, it was at Marathon that Theseus, the prince
and guardian hero of Athens, destroyed the monster which
ravaged the country, and had been brought by Hercules from
Crete.
It is evident that these local recollections were not lost upon
those who welcomed with great gladness the promise of the
pastoral Deity Pan – to whom a grotto on the rocks above the
Plain of Marathon was subsequently dedicated – that he would
come from Arcadia to assist them in the battle in which they were
now about to engage. In fact, these very traditions were blended
in after-times with the historical features, and became a part of
the real scenery, of the battle of Marathon. The fresco in which it
was represented by PANAENUS, the cousin of PHIDIAS, on the
wall of the POECILE, or Painted-porch, at Athens, while in the
back-ground were the Phoenician ships riding in the bay, and
nearer to the spectator, the Athenians were driving the Persians
into the marshes and the sea, exhibited in the front of the picture,
near Miltiades, Callimachus and Cynaegeirus, the forms of
MINERVA, and of HERCULES and that of THESEUS like one
rising from the earth.
To the traveller who visits the Plain of Marathon at this day,
the two most attractive and interesting objects are the
TUMULUS or Mound, which has been described as standing
between the two Marshes, and about half-a-mile from the sea;
and at a distance of a thousand yards to the north of this, the
substructions of a square building, formed of large blocks of
white marble, which now bears the name of PYRGOS, or the
TOWER.
Beneath the former, lie the remains of the one hundred and
ninety-two Athenians who fell in the battle: the latter is the
trophy of Miltiades.
To bury these heroes on the spot where they fell, was wise and
noble. The body of Callimachus, the leader of the right wing, was
interred among them; and as they fought, arranged by tribes, in
the field, so they now lie in the same order in this tomb. Even the
spectator of these days, who comes from a distant land, will feel
an emotion of awe when looking upon this grand and simple
monument, with which he seems to be left alone on this wide and
solitary plain; nor will he wonder that the ancient inhabitants of
this place revered those who lie beneath it as Beings more than
human, that they heard the sound of arms and the neighing of
horses around it in the gloom of the night, and that the greatest
Orator of the Ancient World swore by those who lay at Marathon
as if they were Gods.
Not only was Miltiades the leader of the Athenians on this
plain, but it was through his means that they fought there at all.
To him, therefore, they erected the honorary monument of which
the remains have just been noticed. This trophy of Miltiades,
which is now before us, would not suffer Themistocles to sleep.
Such was the effect of this fabric on his mind. Such were the
fruits of public rewards at that time. By honouring greatness, they
created it. The Trophy of Miltiades on the Plain of Marathon
produced that of Themistocles on the promontory of Salamis.
Of both these great battles, there existed visible memorials on
the spots where they were fought. But with respect to the manner
in which their memory has been preserved by other records, their
fate has been very different. It is remarkable that while the battle
of Marathon was represented both in painting and in sculpture, on
the wall of the Poecile in the Agora of Athens and in the Temple
of Victory on the Acropolis, on the frieze of which we still see
figures of the Persian combatants with their lunar shields, their
bows and quivers, their curved scimitars, their loose trowsers and
Phrygian tiaras, this was not the case with the battle of Salamis.
This difference arose not from any pre-eminence of glory which
the former enjoyed, for in this respect Salamis did not yield to
Marathon, but rather from the dissimilar nature of the two battles
themselves. While the variety of attitudes and movements of the
combatants engaged in a conflict by land afforded ample scope to
the artist for a display of his powers of conception and of
execution, especially in his treatment of the human form, the
features and scenery of a sea-fight, such as the long ships, their
erect beaks and their parallel lines of oars, were less tractable
materials for his chisel and his pencil: their forms were too rigid
and too little susceptible of that ideal grace which was the soul of
his art, to permit him to attempt a representation which would fail
to enhance the glory of that memorable deed, and perhaps would
even expose it to the ridicule of his critical and fastidious
countrymen.
But what Sculpture and Painting could not attempt, another Art
has accomplished. Among the combatants, both at Marathon and
Salamis, was the tragic poet Aeschylus. He left the former battle
to be celebrated in the frescos of the Porch, and on the frieze of
the Temple; the latter the dramatist himself immortalized in
verses which retain their original freshness, while the painting of
the one has vanished, and the sculptor of the other has been
mutilated by decay. While the colours of the Painter have faded,
and the marble of the Sculptor is broken and banished to a distant
land, the work of the Poet lives every where: Aeschylus, in his
drama of The Persians, has painted, in honour of Salamis, a
Portico which will never fade, and erected a Temple of Victory
which will never fall.
It is a walk of five hours from the Plain of Marathon to the
heights of Mount Pentelicus where the marble quarries are seen
which have obtained for this mountain so much renown in the
annals of ancient Art. The road ascends from the plain toward the
south-west, and passes over elevated steeps clad with pines and
olives, and through glens refreshed with clear brooks, and
overhung with oleanders and myrtles. The quarries, of which
there are two, are to the north, the one at a mile’s distance, the
other a little more than two, of the Monastery which derives its
name from the mountain under whose summit it lies.
The larger quarry is open to light; on the south it is bounded by
the rock, hewn to a lofty and perpendicular wall. At the base of it
is a wide cavern which penetrates into the recesses of the cliff,
and is hung with stalactites of white marble glittering with the
brilliance of alabaster: the incrustations, tinged with various hues
which shoot like branches from the rock, present the appearance,
when seen at a distance, of trees and groves of stone. The mouth
of the grotto is fringed over with tufts of ivy.
The marble of the Pentelic quarries resembles that of Paros in
whiteness and splendour; in fineness of grain it eclipses it; in this
respect it is very similar to that of Carrara while it is exempt
from the metallic stains with which this latter is frequently
sullied. Let us contrast for a moment the present appearance of
this vast quarry before, with its former condition. About two
thousand two hundred years ago, its sides, which are now
deserted and silent, resounded with the din of busy morkmen
hewing its cliffs, and heaving with ropes and pulleys the huge
masses which they had quarried from them, and letting them sink
upon the sledges which bore them down the steep mountain-track
into the plain and through the gates of the city of Athens, or
carried them to the harbour of the Peiraeus whence they were
transported to the shores of distant lands.
We look with feelings of respect on the spots where great men
were born: the palace where a king or a conqueror first saw the
light is an object of veneration; we make a pilgrimage to the
native place of the philosopher, and tablets are placed on the
walls of the dwelling where a great poet first breathed the air: and
we should here be guilty of strange insensibility, if we could
regard with indifference, nay, without a feeling of veneration,
this, the native place of so many buildings and statues which
have inspired then admiration, refined the taste, influenced the
acts, humanized the manners and elevated the thoughts and even
added dignity to the religion of men, for hundreds and thousand
of years: he would be little to be envied, who could behold this
vast and silent chamber of rock in which those immortal fabrics,
the PARTHENON, the PROPYLAEA and the TEMPLE OF
THESEUS were born, from whose recesses came forth that long
train of beautiful forms which, sculptured in marble, have made
the Panathenaic solemnity, which they represent, no longer a
quinquennial festival but an eternal jubilee, and the possession of
which alone, although marred as they are now, torn from their
proper soil, deposited, like dead objects, in a foreign Museum,
and no longer breathing their native freshness on their own
Temple – a thing, perhaps, just and expedient, but still to be
deplored – has made England richer in the production of
sculpture than any other nation in the world.
Here at least, on the spot itself, and with this object before us,
we may be permitted to indulge in such an emotion, and also to
express the sentiment that – to compare human things with divine
– we, in this marble mine of Pentelicus, when we thus consider it
together with the structures and forms which have emanated
thence, are presented with a picture of the operations of that
creative and vivifying Power by which the great fabric of the
Universe was reared, and all the forms and imagery with which it
is furnished were produced from the void and lifeless quarry of
Chaos.
Nor should we forget here the names of those who have
employed their art in fashioning the materials which they derived
from this place. The marble which was drawn from the spot
before us was worked by the hands of the greatest Architects and
Sculptors of antiquity it was hewn and chiselled by Ictinus and
Phidias; it was carved by Scopas and by Praxiteles; it exercised
their skill and has made their names immortal.
Cicero, in one of his letters to Atticus, expresses his desire to
receive some statues of Pentelic marble which his friend had
promised to send him from this country; and the architraves hewn
from the neighbouring mountain of Hymettus were used to
decorate the palaces of Rome in the Augustan age,
She therefore borrowed her marble from Athens and nothing
indicates more forcibly the pre-eminence over the capital of Italy,
which the latter enjoyed as the mistress of the world in arts, than
a comparison of the materials for plastic and architectural
purposes which Nature supplied respectively to each. While those
of Rome were limited to the dark Peperine stone of Alba and of
Gabii, to the Tufo of the Campania, and to the porous and
encrusted Travertine of the Anio – materials not very favourable
for architecture of a decorative kind, and less serviceable for
sculpture – the resources of Athens for both purposes were
inexhaustible. On one side of the old City lay the quarries of the
snow-white Megarian and the grey stone of Eleusis; in the
other,the blue Hymettian, the veined Carystian and the lucid
Pentelic, in short, her stone was marble; and in her language she
gave the same word to both.
Returning to the Monastery of which wee have spoken, and
descending towards the plain of Athens, on the south-west, we
cross one of the sources of the river Cephissus. Another is seen at
Cephissia, a small village in the plain, on the right of the road
from Pentelicus to Athens, at about eight miles distance to the
north-east of the latter. The stream there rises from the earth
beneath a wide plane-tree, and spreads itself into a broad and
quiet pool of clear water, which in the summer season is
overhung with the leaves and fruit of various trees. The houses of
the village are sprinkled among gardens, vineyards and oliveyards. It was the country of the comic poet Menander and the
summer retreat of the learned and liberal philosopher of Athens,
Herodes Atticus. This was his Tusculum. To this spot he retired
for health and study: hither he invited his friends and the lovers
of pursuits similar to his own. His villa at Cephissia, as we are
informed by one who enjoyed his hospitality here in the sultry
season, was refreshed by streams and shaded by a grove. On one
side of it were long porticos, or arcades, beneath which he and
his friends used to walk and converse, and at its back were
copious baths of cool and transparent water: the gardens about it
resounded with the murmuring of brooks and the warbling of
birds. This was the residence, and such were the recreations of
one who, notwithstanding the charges which have been made
against him of literary vanity and idle display, was, from his
erudition, his public spirit and his munificence, well worthy to
have passed his days, as he did, at Athens, at Cephissia and at
Marathon, in the peaceful age of Trajan, Hadrian and the
Antonines.
We are carried from our mountain track still further into the
plain, and in the direction of Athens, to visit a place which was
connected in former times with the private life of another
philosopher. Between the two villages of CEPHISSIA and
MAROUSI, is that of HARACLE. Near this spot, among these
olive groves and vineyards, was the country seat of PLATO. He
speaks of it in his will, where he bequeaths it to his son
Adeimantus, as lying near the road to Cephissia, which was on
the north, and reaching on the south to the HERACLEUM, or
Temple of Hercules. From this notice of it its position is easily
ascertained; for the names of both of these places are preserved to
this day; that of the former in the modern Cephissia, while that of
the latter survives in the village just mentioned of HERACLE.
Perhaps it was from his orchard on this spot that the Philosopher
sent the large present of figs to Diogenes, who had asked only for
three, which drew from the cynic the sarcastic answer, instead of
thanks: “Thus it is, that when you are asked a plain question in
philosophy, which might be answered in three words, you reply
to the inquirer I ten thousand.”
We have spoken above of the village of Marousi. As those of
Cephissia and Heraclé preserve in their names a record of their
ancient inhabitants, their language, and their religious worship, so
that of Marousi recalls to the recollection the title of a heathen
Deity, who was the object of devotion to the ancestors of the
villagers who dwell here more than two thousand years ago.
Cased in the plaster wall of a small Greek chapel, near t this
place, is a marble slab, which, as the ancient Greek inscription
upon it commemorates, served once as a limit to mark the
termination of the sacred enclosure o the Temple of
AMARUSIAN DIANA, of whom appellation a vestige remains
in the name of the village of MAROUSI.
At the birth of Ericthonius, the ancient king of Attica, Pallas
Minerva is said to have come from her Temple at PELLENE to
Athens, and to have borne, as a natal gift, through the air, that
remarkable conical hill which stands at the north-east of Athens,
and which was first named LYCABETTUS, then ANCHESMUS
and at present, the Mount of St. George. The Goddess, it is said,
dropped it from her arms on the spot where it is now, in order
that it might serve as a bulwark to defend Athens on that side.
The Temple of Pallene, from which she came, stood not far from
Marousi. It was a spot famed in history as the scene of the contest
between the sons of Peisistratus and their rivals the
Alcmaeonidae, and in earlier days, for the pursuit, by Iolaus, of
the Argive Eurystheus, from the Plain of Marathon to the
Scironian rocks.
Between the southern foot of the Pentelicus and the northern
slope of HYMETTUS is a level interval two miles broad. This is
the communication between the two principal plains of Attica,
namely, that of Athens on the west, and that of MESOGAEA, or
INTERIOR, on the south-east.
It is superfluous to repeat what has already been said, of the
extent, variety and beauty of the view from the summit of Mount
Hymettus. It will long live in the memory of him who has beheld
it, presenting to the eye objects and creations both of nature and
of art, distinguished by such surpassing loveliness both of
symmetry and of colour, and of such interest in themselves, and
in the thoughts which they suggest, that neither the lapse of time,
nor the business of life, nor weariness of body or of mind, will
ever be able to deprive him of the pleasure which he felt when
contemplating the scenery beneath him, as he stood upon this
spot.
The produce of the neighbouring mountain of Pentelicus has
been spoken of above. To compare with it that of Hymettus.
While the vast quarries of the former – having once been worked
with laborious energy by generations of men, who have left no
posterity in their own land – have remained untouched for many
centuries, there has been no cessation of industry, and no
interruption in the succession of labourers in the humbler hives of
Hymettus, from the most glorious days of Athens to the present
hour. The Cecropian Bees have survived all the revolutions
which have changed the features and uprooted the population of
Attica: according to the poetical prophecy,
Their race remains immortal, ever stands
Their house unmoved, and sires are born.
On the southern slope of the Hymettus, a little above the
village of BARI, is a subterranean grotto which well deserves to
be seen. We descend a few steps hewn in the rock and enter the
cave, which is lighted from the narrow adit: it is hung with
stalactites, and bends itself so as to form two apartments, the one
nearly parallel to the other. The place was a natural Temple,
dedicated to Pan and the pastoral Nymphs. It would have been a
fit scene for an Idyll of Theocritus, and was worthy, from its
beauty, to have been graced with inscriptions from the pen of
Nossis and Meleager. In ancient days the pipes and reeds of
shepherds were suspended, as votives offerings, on its rocky
walls; basins of stone and cups of wood carved with figures and
flowers, were here dedicated to the Deities of the place: here
images of the Nymphs stood in their small niches; hither the first
flowers of their gardens, the first ripe ears of their harvests, the
first grapes of their vineyards, the first apples of their orchards
were brought as oblations by the shepherds and peasants of
Attica. And now, at this day, there remain visible traces of their
devotion, as well as memorials of the person who dedicated this
grotto to the worship of their rural Deities. Engraved on the rock,
at the entrance, is an inscription in verse, which announces that
Archedemus, a native of Pherae, in Thessaly, formed this cave,
by the counsel of the Nymphs: other records of the same kind
inform us that it was sacred to the Graces, to Apollo and to Pan.
Two verses inscribed on a slab of marble, speak of a garden,
planted here in honour of the Nymphs. In another part of the cave
is the figure of Archedemus himself, rudely sculptured on the
rock, dressed kin his shepherd’s coat, and with a hammer and a
chisel in his hands, cutting the sides of the cave.
Plato, in early youth, was led by his parents to a grotto on
Mount Hymettus, that he might present an offering to Pan, the
Nymphs and the Pastoral Apollo, to whom it was dedicated.
There is good reason to believe that this cave which, as the above
inscriptions still existing on its walls assure us, was consecrated
to those Deities, has been trodden by the feet of the great
philosopher of Athens; and that his eye has rested upon the same
objects that we now see in this simple pastoral temple, which has
sustained but little injury from the lapse of the years, while the
magnificent fanes of the Athenian capital have crumbled to
decay.
It is a distance of ten miles, in an easterly direction, from this
spot to the bay of PRASIAE, one of the best harbours of the coast
of Attica. At the centre of its entrance, which is a mile broad, is a
small island on which, at an elevation of three hundred feet from
the level of the sea, is a sitting statue of white marble, from the
attitude of which, resembling that of a tailor at his work, the
harbour derives its modern name of PORT RAPHTE – an
appellation not very complimentary to its sculptor, who is
supposed to have intended to represent by it a Roman Emperor.
About nine miles south of this place is another harbour, more
celebrated in ancient times, that of THORICUS: it is a
semicircular bay, a mile and a half in breadth: to the north of it,
in a rugged hill, are the remains of the Acropolis if the city, of
rude and massive masonry: at its foot is a Theatre, and near it a
covered Gallery of very antique style. In the plain, to the west,
are the ruins of a large and magnificent Building, which was
adorned with a marble peristyle. Another vestige of the ancient
Thocritus survives in the modern name of the place, THERICO.
If a line be drawn due west from the site of the ancient
Thoricus, it will, after a distance of eight miles, meet the western
coast of Attica, in a place formerly called ANAPHLYSTUS, and
now, by a slight change, ANAPHYRO. If again, from this points,
Thoricus and Anaphlystus, lines be drawn to CAPO COLONNI,
the ancient SUNIUM, we shall then have a triangle nearly
equilateral, at the three angles of which are three places of
considerable importance in the history of Attica, and whose sides
enclose a space from which she derived the means of her former
affluence and glory.
The coined treasure of Athens was preserved in the
OPISTHODOMUS, or hinder apartment of the PARTHENON,
or Temple of Minerva, in the Acropolis of that city. This country
which we are now describing, was a natural Opisthodomus to the
Temple of Minerva, on the promontory of Sunium. In it lay the
uncoined wealth of Athens. In it were the mines of Attica, that
“fountain of silver, the treasure of the land”. The district was
called LAUREUM, a name probably derived from the shafts and
passages sunk and pierced beneath its surface, many of which are
still visible n the road between Sunium and Thoricus. The path
here, near the shore, is strewn with heaps of scoria, from which
the silver ore was smelted in ancient times.
These mines were the property of the Athenian State, and
were transferred by it to individuals for payments made partly as
reserved rent, the amount of the former being regulated by the
extent and supposed value of the mine, that of the latter by its
actual productiveness. They were worked at a period of very
early antiquity: in the days of Themistocles the supply from them
was very abundant; when Xenophon wrote, they were beginning
to fail; in Strabo’s age they were exhausted; Pausanias speaks of
them only as a monument of the past. They consisted of large
vaults, supported by columns, aired and lighted by vents, and
divided into compartments. Many thousands slaves were
employed in working them. From these dark cavities, now shaded
with pines and overgrown with junipers and lentisks, was derived
the wealth which enabled Athens to create and maintain the navy
by which she first coped with Aegina and afterwards freed
Greece. Hence too issued the coin of Athens, which circulated in
every part of the civilized world, and was no where surpassed in
purity. For a long time she had no other term in her language for
money than that which signified silver: whether she ever coined
gold is doubtful, but before she used it in her currency, her
liberties were lost.
It was the boast of Athens that her coinage was so excellent
that it was everywhere exchanged with profit by its possessors.
And it is worthy of remark that, in order to preserve its credit in
foreign lands, she studiously retained upon it the original type of
the head of Minerva, which looked rather as if it had proceeded
from Aegypt than from the most polished capital of Greece: thus,
while in all the other parts of design she advanced from the rude
outline to consummate symmetry, in Numismatics she remained
stationary, and while all her other productions were unrivalled in
elegance, her money was as inferior in beauty as it claimed to be
superior in value, to that of nearly all the other states of Greece.
The TEMPLE OF MINERVA, at Sunium, stands upon a raised
terrace at the highest point of the cape; its direction is from east
to west; it had six columns at each front; the number of those on
the north and south cannot clearly be ascertained: nine are still
standing on the south, three on the north, two and one of the
antae at the east. It was surrounded by a sacred temenos or
enclosure, entered by a portico or Propylaea at its north-east
corner. The walls of the fortress of Sunium descend from the
temple toward the north; they are still traceable for their complete
circuit, which is half a mile.
This temple, elevated on high above the Aegean Sea, at the
extremity of this promontory, stood like the Portico or Vestibule
at Attica. Constructed of white marble, placed on this noble site,
and visible at a great distance from the sea, it reminded the
stranger